Death toll from Florida building collapse climbs to 5

SURFSIDE, Florida - The death toll from the partial collapse of a Florida high-rise apartment building rose to five on Saturday as officials continued to hold out hope for survivors, following the release of an engineering report from three years ago that warned of "major structural damage."

The increase in the death toll by one underscored the slow and painstaking search process more than two days after part of the 12-story oceanfront building in Surfside, near Miami Beach, pancaked into a mountain of debris as residents slept inside.

"Today our search and rescue teams found another body in the rubble and as well our search has revealed some human remains," Miami-Dade County mayor Daniella Levine Cava told reporters Saturday evening.

With the identification of three previously recovered bodies and notification of next of kin, "it means that the unaccounted is now gone down to 156, confirmed deaths are now at a total of five," she said.

Rescuers were able to battle back a fire that hampered their efforts earlier in the day, and workers had dug a trench through the debris to control the "very deep" blaze.

"We don't have a resource problem here, we have a luck problem," said Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett.

"The issue is we've been fighting the elements, we've been fighting the fire, but we have one objective. And that is to bring those people out of the rubble safely and return them to their families." 

The passage of time with no further survivors being found raised fears of a much higher death toll as rescuers sift through the debris with heavy machinery and sniffer dogs, and as increasingly frustrated families continued their agonizing wait.

"We have a friend who got out of the building with her husband," Gina Berlin, 54, who lives in the neighborhood, told AFP. "She is still traumatized... And I am still in shock."

At a makeshift memorial on a nearby street, well-wishers piled flowers and lit candles, while family members posted dozens of pictures of missing persons on a chain-link fence.

Two big cranes on Saturday continued shifting debris as the acrid smell of burnt rubber and melting plastic hung in the baking Florida heat.

'ABUNDANT' CRACKING

Authorities and experts have stressed that the causes for Champlain Tower South's collapse are still unknown. 

But the report of an engineering consultancy that studied the building in 2018, released late Friday by officials, underlined early concerns.

It said its inspectors found "major structural damage" to the concrete slab below a ground-level pool deck and "abundant" cracking and crumbling in the parking garage.

"Failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially," warned the report, from the Morabito Consultants firm.

Most of the damage was "probably caused by years of exposure to the corrosive salt air along the South Florida coast," it said.

The report did not indicate that the 40-year-old building risked collapse, but said it needed repairs to maintain "structural integrity."

A lawyer for the building's owners told The New York Times that work was "just about to get started" on the multi-million dollar repairs.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told reporters Saturday that local officials were "considering potentially evacuating" a nearby building that was built by the same developers, around the same time, as the collapsed structure. But he said there were no indications of immediate danger there.

A study led by Florida International University found signs of land subsidence -- a phenomenon affecting much of the Atlantic coast -- at the site in the mid-1990s.

Mayor Cava said the county would immediately undertake a one-month safety audit of all buildings 40 years or older. 

'72 HOURS'

Meanwhile, authorities held out hope that survivors were underneath the rubble.

"All of our training tells us that for at least the first 72 hours, there are high likelihood of people that could be alive in there," Danny Cardeso, with Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, told CBS News.

Israel announced it was sending a team of engineers and rescue specialists to help. 

"We will make every effort to help save human life, and to offer our support to the Jewish community and to our American friends," said Defense Minister Benny Gantz.

Faced with the painstakingly slow search, some families voiced frustration. 

"Not enough is being done," said Mike Salberg, who came from New York after the accident. Five family members, including his parents, remain unaccounted for.

"I want answers," he told AFP. 

Others were preparing for the worst.

"We want to be hopeful but also we have to be realistic," said a man who gave his name only as Mark, waiting for news of his friend's mother.

"The next step is being there for the families and know why this happened."

Agence France-Presse

Death toll rises to 24 in Cambodia building collapse, some still trapped

PHNOM PENH -- At least 24 people were killed and 23 injured after a building in Cambodia collapsed, trapping workers under rubble, officials said on Sunday.

The seven-story concrete building collapsed on Friday in the coastal town of Kep, about 160 km southwest of the capital Phnom Penh.

It came a year after another construction site collapsed, killing 28 people in Preah Sihanouk province.

"Twenty-four people have died so far," Kep governor Ken Satha told Reuters. "Three of the bodies are not yet at hospital, they have not been pulled out yet."

An unknown number of workers remained trapped, Satha said, adding that authorities had detained a Cambodian couple, the owners of the building, for questioning.

Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Saturday that rescuers were still struggling to reach those missing in the rubble.

Cambodia is undergoing a construction boom to serve growing crowds of Chinese tourists and investors.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

4 killed in Cambodia building collapse

KEP, Cambodia—Four people were killed and more than a dozen injured when a 7-storey building under construction collapsed in southern Cambodia on Friday trapping workers under the rubble, an official told AFP, as the search for more victims went into the night.

The building in coastal Kep province was meant to be a hotel but crumpled at around 4:30 p.m., with photos showing concrete floors sandwiched together as heavy machinery moved in to help clear the wreckage.

Cambodian leader Hun Sen said in a Facebook post he was traveling to the site and he arrived late Friday evening.

Sixteen people were injured in addition to the 4 who died, Ros Udong, spokesman for the Kep provincial administration, told AFP by phone.

Deadly accidents plague the kingdom's poorly regulated building sector even as the country has enjoyed a construction boom.

In June, nearly 30 people died after the collapse of a building under construction in Sihanoukville, a beach town undergoing a Chinese investment bonanza.

Last month at least 3 workers died and more than a dozen others were seriously injured after an under-construction dining hall at a temple collapsed in the tourist town of Siem Reap.

There are an estimated 200,000 construction workers in Cambodia, most unskilled, reliant on day wages and not protected by union rules, according to the International Labor Organization.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

4 dead, buildings down as strongest tremor in decades rocks Albania

TIRANA - At least four people died after the most powerful earthquake to hit Albania in decades rocked the capital of Tirana and surrounding region early on Tuesday, causing several buildings to collapse and burying residents in the rubble.

The 6.4-magnitude quake struck shortly before 4 a.m. local time (0300 GMT), the US Geological Survey (USGS) said, the second powerful tremor to hit the region in two months.

It was centered 30 kilometers west of Tirana, at a shallow depth of 10 kms, the USGS said.

Two women were found in the rubble of an apartment building in the northern village of Thumane, and a man died in the town of Kurbin after panicking and jumping out of a building, a Defense Ministry spokeswoman said.

A dead body, the fourth victim of the earthquake, was pulled out from under a collapsed building in Durres, the defense ministry confirmed.

Emergency workers told local media one of those killed was an elderly woman who had managed to save her grandson by cradling him with her body.

Unverified video footage posted on social media showed what appeared to be a collapsed building in Durres, 40 kms west of Tirana, on the Adriatic coast. Other footage showed buildings with large cracks and fallen masonry, including one apartment with most of a bedroom wall missing.

"Firefighters and army staff are helping residents (caught) under the rubble" in Durres and the nearby village of Thumane, the Defense Ministry spokeswoman told reporters.

An unidentified man, with a wound dressing on his right cheek, told News24 TV his daughter and niece were among those trapped in a collapsed apartment building in Durres.

"I talked with my daughter and niece on the phone. They said they are well and are waiting for the rescue. Could not talk to my wife. There are other families, but I could not talk to them," the man said.

Two government spokesmen told Reuters the biggest damage to buildings was in Durres and a few people had been taken to hospital in Tirana.

A Reuters witness described residents fleeing apartment buildings in Tirana, some carrying babies. Power was down in several neighborhoods.

Three hours after the main tremor, a strong aftershock rocked the city, which is known for its colorful mix of architecture from its Ottoman, Fascist and Soviet past.

Several smaller tremors were recorded in the hour before the main quake, which was also felt across the Balkans and in the southern Italian region of Puglia.

"We were awake because of the previous quakes, but the last one shook us around. Everything at home kept falling down," Refik, a Tirana resident, told Reuters of what happened in his sixth-floor apartment.

Located along the Adriatic and Ionian Seas, between Greece and Macedonia, Albania experiences regular seismic activity.

An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.6 shook the country on Sept. 21, damaging around 500 houses and destroying some. The defense ministry had said it was the most powerful quake in Albania in the last 30 years.

The images of collapsed or semi-collapsed buildings in urban areas suggested Tuesday's quake was more powerful than one in 1979, which razed a neighborhood of the northern town of Shkoder, bordering Montenegro. Neither of those two earlier earthquakes caused any fatalities.

The Balkan nation is the poorest country in Europe, with an average income of less than a third of the European Union average, according to Eurostat data.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Cambodia charges Chinese nationals over deadly building collapse

PHNOM PENH- A Cambodian court charged 7 people on Tuesday, including 5 Chinese nationals, with involuntary manslaughter and conspiracy after 28 people died in a collapsed building on the weekend.

Some 26 people were injured after the Chinese-owned building collapsed on Saturday in the coastal town of Sihanoukville, prompting Prime Minister Hun Sen to fire a top disaster management official.

Investigators are trying to determine what caused the 7-story steel and concrete structure to crumble without warning before dawn, trapping construction workers who were sleeping on the site. The last 2 survivors were found on Monday.

The port and resort town has seen a rush of Chinese investment in recent years, especially in the casino, property and tourism sectors, and questions have been raised about construction standards.

Prosecutors charged 2 Chinese nationals, the building owner Chen Kun and construction supervisor Deng Xing Gui, with involuntary manslaughter, causing unintentional injuries and damage, according to the Preah Sihanouk Provincial Court.

Three other Chinese nationals, a Vietnamese and a Cambodian were charged with conspiracy related to the charges, the court documents showed.

The men were not available for comment on Tuesday.

Hun Sen fired a top disaster management official on Monday for failing to take responsibility for the disaster and accepted the resignation of Yun Min, the governor of Preah Sihanouk province.

High-level resignations over wrongdoing are rare in Cambodia.

The accident has sparked a public debate about the nature of Chinese businesses in Cambodia, which critics say are allowed to operate without enough scrutiny.

Sihanoukville is home to Cambodia's largest port and a Chinese Special Economic Zone linked to Beijing's Belt and Road initiative.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Mumbai building collapse death toll jumps to 33

MUMBAI - The death toll from a building collapse in India's commercial capital Mumbai jumped to 33 Friday after rescuers pulled more than a dozen bodies from the rubble overnight.

Officials said 22 men, eight women and three children died when the residential building gave way on Thursday morning in the densely populated area of Bhendi Bazaar following heavy rains.

The 117-year-old building had been declared unsafe and was due to be demolished as part of a redevelopment project that is transforming Bhendi Bazaar, a scruffy colonial-era market.


"Overnight we pulled out 15 bodies, taking the total death count to 33," Tanaji Kamble, a disaster management spokesman for Mumbai's civic authority, told AFP.

The dead included a 12-year-old boy and two girls aged 11 and 14, he added.

Twelve other people were being treated for injuries at a local hospital, Kamble said.

Rescuers were still picking through the debris on Friday morning in the hope of finding more survivors, 24 hours after the dilapidated building collapsed in one of Mumbai's most historic districts.

It was the latest deadly housing collapse to strike the city, highlighting poor construction standards in India, and came following severe rains that have wreaked havoc in many parts of South Asia.

Building collapses are common in Mumbai, especially during the monsoon season from late June to September, when heavy rains lash the western Indian city, weakening poorly built structures.

Millions are forced to live in cramped, ramshackle properties because of spiraling real estate prices and a lack of housing for the poor.

In 2013, 60 people were killed when a residential block came crashing down in one of Mumbai's worst housing disasters.

Thursday's collapse came after flooding in the city killed 10 people.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Father's last embrace saves girl in China building collapse

A little girl protected by the embrace of her dead father was the last survivor pulled out of the rubble of collapsed multi-storey buildings in China, reports said Tuesday.

She was found deep in the debris of four six-storey residential buildings more than 12 hours after they crumbled in Wenzhou in the eastern province of Zhejiang, killing at least 22 people, state broadcaster CCTV said.

Three-year-old Wu Ningxi survived with only minor injuries thanks to the protection offered by her young father, who was found dead after shielding her from falling rubble, it added.

"The child was able to survive entirely thanks to the fact that her dad used his own flesh and blood to prop up a life-saving space for his daughter," a rescuer told the China Youth Daily.

The 26-year-old shoe factory worker was found under a thick cement pillar, draped over his daughter.

The family had been buried alive in their living room and the body of Wu's mother was discovered not far from the pair.

Photos showed hard-hatted rescuers lifting the girl's half-naked body from the mess of cement and fallen bricks late Monday, her hair matted with dust as they carried her out and gingerly placed her onto a stretcher.

The search through the three-storey-high debris concluded early Tuesday, the Lucheng district government said at a press conference, with 22 confirmed dead and only five survivors other than the girl rescued.

The cause of the disaster was still under investigation, CCTV said.

Recent heavy rainfall combined with the poor quality of construction and age of the buildings, built by the villagers themselves, were probable contributing factors, it cited a preliminary analysis as saying.

Neighbouring buildings constructed in the 1970s were being demolished to prevent further collapses, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The buildings had been packed with migrant workers, among them Wu's parents, hundreds of millions of whom have moved from China's countryside to its towns and cities in recent decades, their labour fuelling the country's economic boom.

Many remain poorly paid and face restrictions on buying homes in the areas where they work.

China has seen several building collapses in recent years, with some blamed on low-quality construction.

In May 16 people were reported dead after a residential building in Guizhou province in the southwest collapsed due to landslides.

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